Curriculum Development Workshop for KPU Staff – A World First!

On the 13-16 July 2010, a new approach to the implementation of a long term strategy for the use of BRIDGE was trialled in Indonesia. Organised by UNDP Indonesia and under the supervision of Ross Attrill, manager of the International BRIDGE office, five graduates from both the recent Bali and Bandung BRIDGE Train the Facilitator (TTF) workshops convened in Bogor to develop two, 5 day BRIDGE workshops specifically designed for the Indonesian electoral context. The first of the workshops was a combination of the Introduction to Electoral Administration, Pre-Election and Strategic and Financial Planning Modules. The second was a combination of the Boundary Delimitation, Voter Information and Voter Registration Modules. The group was divided in half and each was tasked with selecting Key Understandings, selecting and modifying the most appropriate BRIDGE activities to meet those Key Understandings, developing agenda and compiling the Facilitators Notes for each workshop and selecting and developing the teaching resources for each workshop. The groups worked cohesively and diligently (sometimes working late into the evening) and the resulting outputs were the materials for two very high quality BRIDGE workshops, each completely translated into Bahasa Indonesia.

On Saturday, 17 July, a facilitation team consisting of 5 graduates (3 male, 2 female) from the Bali TTF convened to prepare for conducting a one-day pilot of some of the materials prepared by the curriculum development team. The team then conducted the pilot on Monday 19 July for approximately 20 members of the National KPU secretariat. The pilot was conducted in an extremely professional manner and the feedback from participants was very positive.

The time spent in developing the curriculum, preparing for the pilot and conducting the pilot will be counted towards the full accreditation all of those involved.

By participating in the curriculum development team, preparing for the pilot and facilitating the pilot, Mareska Mantik of UNDP Indonesia, successfully achieved her “Workshop Facilitator” status. Congratulations to Mareska. I know you will be a wonderful BRIDGE facilitator.

This approach demonstrated the power of building a curriculum development workshop into the already existing BRIDGE implementation strategy. Exposing a well selected group of TTF graduates to this sort of intensive workshop, deepens and broadens their understanding of the BRIDGE materials, it teaches them the skill of selecting and customising materials for their context and gives them ownership of the workshops to be implemented in their country or region. In short, it develops the capacity of TTF graduates in yet another direction and will mean that the use of BRIDGE in Indonesia will be better informed and more sustainable.

I would like to see this approach adopted whenever BRIDGE is introduced to a new context. Congratulations to all concerned, especially the senior executive of the KPU for their support and for their excellent selection of the team members.